Dispelling

I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop.  Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.

Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily.  Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people.  Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on.  Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull).  Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel.  In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about.  In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.

Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling.  I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out.  It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).

I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click.  I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory.  I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away.  If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. 
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers.  In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left.  This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you really need to dispel someone.  I’ll have to break Google out when I get home.  Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. 

I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will.  Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it.  Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.

GTFO! nub.

I got summoned into a guild 25 man last week, they were a touch short again, and in a clearly desperate attempt to scrape the bottom of the reservist barrel they asked me along.  Cho’gall was the foe, a boss that has eluded the guild for longer than it should have done.  This is a completely new fight to me, I’d not even read the strategy, other than a cursory glance over the BoT boss list a while ago, as I hadn’t planned on being here any time soon.  I’d learnt from my previous mistake of unpreparedness, and had a stock of flasks, food and assorted other niff-naff to aid my performance.  A quick run through the strategy text on the guild website and a few pointers from the raid leader over vent (fortunately we were waiting for one of the raid to reboot from a crash so I didn’t waste anyone's time) and we were off.

I’ve, on several occasions in this blog, referred to my basic cookie cutter heroic strategy:

"don't stand in the crap on the floor or you'll die"

"sometimes the crap on the floor will keep you alive, stand in it"

"kill the adds please"

"if you can't kill it, kite it"

Cho’gall, conforms nicely to these rules, with one slight addition on positioning; when there are no adds you need to stand RIGHT UP his chuff, I mean really close, the whole raid; this is for interrupting the worship ability.  When the corrupting adherent add is summoned the raid disperses, nukes it and then forms back on the afore mentioned bosses chuff, burning down the rather nasty blood of the old gods adds which spawn from the corpse of the first add.

This quite often leads to a smear of raid members behind the boss, rather than a nice close group.  This makes interrupting rather difficult, but also means it’s particularly difficult to spot the assortment of nasty crap on the floor.  there’s also an abundance of crap spawning as you move to kill the adds, and move back the the boss which must be avoided; given the speed movement must be complete to be in position, this is quite difficult, especially when you have a high “i don’t know what I’m doing coefficient” multiplier…

After a couple of attempts, I was surviving till the wipe, or there about, but it was pointed out that I was getting hit by a bit too much of the crap on the floor, when one of the raid members pipes up “have you got GTFO?” I didn’t, nor did I even know what it was. turning to my trusty laptop I quickly looked it up, and decided it was something that I should definitely have a look at.  A quick download and relog and I was up and running.

GTFO is a very simple mod, if you’re familiar with the acronym, you’ll be able to guess what it’s about;  very basically it’s an idiot saver… If you’ve not noticed you’re standing in crap, it alerts you to the fact that you need to move with a rather loud klaxon.  Whether you’re the day dreamer type or the flustered not got a clue what's going on type being new to an encounter, or just need something as a backup just in case you miss some floor-crap GTFO is brilliant.

Not only can it give you an audible alert, if you use power auras, you can get further visible “GET OUT” messages.   And that's not all! as if that weren’t enough, it not only tells tells you that you’re in crap and need to move, it tells you if you’ve moved out of good crap and need to move back!  It EVEN lets you configure it to give different audible warnings for must move now type AOE, or low priority, finish your cast and then move type damage. 

Pure, pure, genius, I don’t know how I ever managed without it.  Clearly last week, my games room office was lit up with the sound of alarm bells which we more akin to what you’d expect to hear in a burning building; on my return last night, where I’d had time to digest what was going on and what I was doing, and compare that to what the strategy says, I was far better at avoiding the crap – I was generally in the right place at the right time, but even then there were a couple of reminder bells which saved our healers mana.  The icing on the cake was downing Cho’gall, a guild first (and my second guild first boss kill) not bad for a slacker casual who ‘doesn’t raid’…. ahem

Happy Monday’s

Another Monday night off badminton with the bloody wrist, on the up side another night playing WOW (yeah yeah, I know its Wednesday, I’m slack) and another night where I offer my services should they be needed and was taken up on the offer straight away.  This was only my second 25 man experience, my first coming two weeks ago, exactly the same situation as my original post then.  Part way through the instance, stalling on Ascendant Council.  This time I was a touch more prepared having read up on the strategy after the last fight out of curiosity; turns out i was doing everything right (thanks in the main part to an excellent explanation from the raid leader), but now I was confident I was doing it right, and knew the reasons why I was doing it. 

I was pleased with my performance in all, upping my DPS by 1k on the first attempt and by just over 2k by the 3rd and final one in which we were successful.  Again, whilst my DPS output wasn’t close to the best guys in the raid, it was no where near the lowest, and I managed to survive each encounter through till we were about to wipe on the two failed attempts.  As an added sweetener I picked up the DPS trinket as no one else fancied it
Onwards and upwards to Cho’gal for a few learning attempts; most of the guild haven't seen this guy yet so it was a few attempts which went reasonably well to get to grips with the fight before the call.  A thoroughly enjoyable night, even with my sub par gear it was a nice ego boost to realise I picked up the fight quicker than a lot of the more regular raiders, still trying desperately to avoid catching the raiding bug again. Destined to fail.
One thing that I’ve decided as a result, I’m stopping slacking on the buffs front, I’ve been busy sorting the cooking out which I’ve been avoiding like the plague for the last few months, getting a stock of flasks so I don't have to rinse a guildie of their spares or raid the auction house, and start reforging for a bit more hit on my gear as the raid hit cap is higher than heroic cap.  Still think I’d prefer to be healing in raids if I’m going to do it longer term, but not confident enough to have them relying on me yet.

Fostering Performance

I read a blog on Bossy Pally earlier in the week about constructive criticism, what it is, why it's a good thing, and specifically why it's not a bad thing. This post was spurred by another great blog post by Rhii on the novel approach her guild deals with criticism (incidentally another blog which mentions llamas and has no supporting pictures whatsoever). I've always been one to actively seek constructive criticism in work and sport – I'd far rather the person I'm asking tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to improve on it than highlight the good stuff, I can't improve if I don't know I'm doing it wrong – if I knew I was doing it wrong I'd be doing something about it. This approach often raises eyebrows in the person I'm asking, and they sometimes feel uncomfortable giving constructive criticism. These two blogs got me thinking about how people 'manage performance' in WOW (that sounds so corporate) and how anyone can aid the performance of themselves and others quite easily.

I'm not going to talk massively about constructive criticism, Ophelie has already covered this, but I'll frame it briefly for the purpose of this post. Constructive Criticism is giving feedback on areas that can be improved (which need not be bad, but could be better) in a manner which indicates what the issues are, and a 'framework' to go about improving them. It is most certainly not "you suck" type comments, that comes under the abuse category. Football fans will probably agree that Lionel Messi is, if not one of the best, the best footballers in the world at the moment; is he perfect? No, could he improve? Most definitely – he's not the best header of the ball, there's one area he might work on in training. At this point, this post is in danger of becoming a whitepaper on how corporate performance management does and doesn't work, I'll try and keep away from that little can of worms, really I will, but there's a lot of similarities between (good) corporate practice and good gaming.

I'll ignore self-improvement for the moment and concentrate on helping other people, as much of the lessons apply when you turn the focus on yourself. Firstly, who can you help? The answer is anyone; I've helped people who I met 5 minutes precious in a PUG, through to experienced raiders who know their class inside out. Giving advice and having it taken on board are two different things, it's all about the relationship you have with the individual and the way you frame your advice. You have a relationship, of sorts, with anyone you've ever interacted with, it may be a very superficial relationship as in my PUG example, but it's still a relationship. If the person has reason to respect what you say, they are more likely to take heed of your words. Imagine for a moment that on the first pull you've shouted in party chat "GOGOGO" and OMG "WTF IS GOING ON WITH YOUR DPS" and then whisper the other shadow priest in the party and say "excuse me, but do you realise that the Mind Spike you're using is removing the three DoTs you've just cast from your target? You'd be better off…." The recipient of this advice is likely to completely ignore it or worse, tell you to stick it. If however you started off with a pleasant "hi guys" or similar you've already framed your words in an (admittedly thin) veil of respect. By starting off with "I hope you don't mind me saying…." Or similar you further open the person up to accepting you're not just trying to call them a noob.

In recent months, I've seen numerous examples of heroics that were heading south being turned around because someone has helped out one or more of the party (quite often be being one of those on the receiving end). So it's clear that something can be done in the very short term to improve performance, I've seen equally as many, if not more instances of members simple leaving or vote-kicking without a word as soon as problems are encountered.

Taking this to the raiding and guild environment, where improvement is more likely to be sought, or even demanded, it's a bit easier, but also a lot harder in some respects. On the relationship front, it's a lot easier, you've had a long time to establish trust, but they recipient has also had a lot more time to observe your actions, if they see that you're not practicing what you preach or lack respect for your words, for whatever reason then you've hit problems. You will also be more likely to encounter the suborn types, you know the ones, the pretty decent players who aren't the best, but are better than average who assume they are the finished article, they're not! See my comments about the certain diminutive football player above.

Once you have established a trusting relationship, how do you go about improvement? Firstly look for the low hanging fruit, pick the easiest things which give the biggest boost first. Take saving money on energy bills for instance, if you want to save money on your electricity bill, what do you do? Spend £10,000 on a solar panel for your roof? No, you pay £100 to replace the insulation in your loft; it's cheaper, easier and quicker, and gives a far better payback on the investment. In the same vein, if someone's DPS is 15k and the best achievable is 18k, but they keep dying, it's probably more profitable to look at why they're dying and focussing on positioning rather than DPS rotation (incidentally DPS may reduce in the short term as a result, but total damage output will drastically improve). On the same token, concentrate on one area at a time, try rubbing your tummy in a circular motion and patting your head at the same time, unless you've practiced for hours (saddo) you almost certainly can't do it – peoples brains best deal with things in a serial nature, tackle one thing, 'fix' it, move on to the next.

If you're a raid leader and you need to help someone improve, you need to make sure your message doesn't come out of the blue – if someone's DPS has been substandard for three months, telling them you've been watching them for some time and they have a week to sort it out or be benched is silly, tackle issues openly and early to avoid drama (llamas?). On the same token, it's not just about negatives, focus on positives, which sounds best "you're DPS is good, but I think we can improve it by…." Or "you're not doing enough DPS, you need to improve by…." Notice also the subtle difference between we and you! We are a team and we are working together to jointly improve our performance. As opposed to you aren't good enough and you need to do something about it.

My final point, is don't forget to look in the mirror; lead by example (even if you're not a GM or a raid leader, you can still lead), actively seek feedback, it's almost impossible to spot your own failings without help; if you've ever tried to proof read an assignment at school or college thinking it was perfect, only to have the teacher hand it back scrawled in red ink you'll know what I mean. Don't shy away from people offering advice, be thick skinned and take it, whether you like what you're hearing or not. Above all, nobody is perfect, everyone can improve in some respect or other, so don't think it doesn't apply to you.



And finally, finally, I've mentioned llama's twice, so I'm going to lead by example, practice what I preach and all that, and include a nice picture!

A night of firsts

A bit of a strange sort of night last night, I'm not normally online on Monday evenings as I play badminton but due to a damaged wrist I couldn't play so decided to run a few instances. I logged in and found I had almost 1.5k in gold waiting for me from auctions, a nice way to start the day off, and proof I wasn't talking complete arse in my post yesterday. Anyways, after I cleaned out my mailbox and decided to have a little spring clean of the banks, a couple of guildies were asking for a heroic, I said I was up for it and was instantly thrown an invite, I explained that my DK (which was the character I was on) wasn't quite ready and I'd get the priest, by which time the party was full, and I realised I was only 1 ilvl away from being able to go on the DK. I'd been eying up a tanking relic on the AH that would easily up my level and there were no other tanks available in guild so I gave them the choice; I'd happily come along if they wanted me, but was happy to drop out if it clearly wasn't going anywhere so they could get a proper tank. They all agreed, so 2k later (so much for making a profit on the AH!), we were queued for a random heroic. Halls of Origination! no crowd control. Bugger.

The first pull went as expected, it was a complete disaster and we wiped, not wanting to waste peoples time I offered to drop and let them re-queue for a PUG tank, they persuade me to have one more go and amazingly we were off, we only did the compulsorily bosses as it was closing in on the guilds raid time, we only wiped twice (or was it three times?) none of which on the bosses, quite pleasing. I came away with 2 new shiny bits of plate and will be eternally grateful to the 4 guildies who took the risk.

A successful start to the night, but that wasn't the end of it, I mentioned we skipped the optional bosses because it was approaching the raid, well the invites went out so as I was planning on being around all evening I whispered the GM and said if I was needed I'd be about, and popped off to make some supper. On my return I was amazed to see a reply asking me to join, so I quickly picked a few pots up from the bank, which amounted to my total preparation, and headed in. This wasn't like my previous 25 man raiding experience in Cata, previously it was the Conclave of Four Winds, an encounter which the guild has had licked for some time, this was the Twilight Ascendant Council, an encounter that the guild has not yet managed on 25 man. As always, wow wiki and a host of other sites were up on the laptop next to the PC, I had a quick read as we were dispatching trash and the GM took me through the strategy on Vent, it seems this was quite useful to some of the regular raiders as they asked a couple of questions (ahem slackers). As with any progression raid, the learning curve was steep, as with my first experience of heroics in one of my earliest (and still most popular) posts about Stonecore. Raids however, in my experience, generally have an extra twist or two; firstly, they generally last loner, having multiple different phases to learn; generally the punishment for slacking is not only do you die, but several of your group do as a direct result of your stupidity too. The Council was no different, three phases, loads going on, and most importantly debufs which kill others. This worried me, I'm happy for me to die if I'm stupid, but I don't like killing other people, my main objective therefore was not to kill others, my secondary objective to last out the fight, and finally, assuming the two former, melt something….

Very Basically, the Ascended Council has three phases, in one and two there are two mobs, the trick is to keep their health as close to each other's as possible, the bigger the difference in health when they de-spawn, the more health the boss has. As you'd expect, in accordance with my heroic instance rules, there's lots of crap on the floor to (not) stand in, there's lots of crap on the flor (and swirling around) that you most definitely must stand in not to die, and just to confuse matters, sometimes the crap on the floor that you mustn't stand in, is exactly the same crap you must stand in depending on what debufs you have. Added to that, and this is the killer (literally) there's a lightning rod debuf which gives you, and two others, about 5 seconds to get out of the middle of the room and away from the raid, or you kill people. The first pull came and to my amazement, I lasted till just before the wipe, more importantly I didn't kill anyone, and whilst I wasn't always too sure which debuff I needed to get from standing in particular shades of crap I seemed to manage it, and I even managed to do reasonable DPS; not great DPS, but reasonable, and not the worst!.

The second pull came, and I forgot about the gravity well thingymabobs, and died early (first or second) so we won't speak about that again, ever. Third up and I lasted the whole fight, stepping in the correct debuffs at the correct times, dealing with a particularly vindictive spate of lightning rod debuffs without killing anyone, and what's more, improving on my DPS by a good 2k from the first run. Unfortunately at this point we had a couple of disconnects and (probably because of this) we got locked out of the chamber so the decision was made to call it. I kind of wish we'd gone on longer, we got to the third phase, and were getting the hang of DPSing the mobs at the correct rate (and listening to calls to swap on Vent – amazing how many people ignore these), but I'm really pleased to have been asked to help out, and (hopefully) didn't let anyone down. All in all I had a cracking night, and I think I might have been bitten by the raiding bug…. I'm almost hoping the wrist hasn't healed in time for next Monday.

SimulationCraft: What does it all mean??

It's been a pretty busy week on my blog, the busiest one traffic wise since I started spewing my ramblings onto paper (well electronic paper). My post on SimulationCraft seems to have struck a few chords so in an attempt to aimlessly chase ratings expand on my success I thought I'd have a stab at explaining what the actual results mean in plain English.

So you've read the idiots guide, you've ballsed up at least 5 attempts at simulating your characters DPS, you've gone back and read the guide again, read the official help files a bit, scratched your head a bit, and finally got some figures that look like what you've been reading on the interweb. Brilliant! You've got a page of completely incomprehensible maths, statistics and pretty graphs that'd look more at home on a PowerPoint at that next dull management meeting you were trying to avoid…

There are some figures that (may) make sense to you instantly; there are others that are best when compared to an average, or a target of where you want to be. If you're comparing something you need a baseline, for this example that's you! (or me as the case may be). For the record, I've run 5 different simulations; one with the ultimate tier 11, 25 man gear, with all the raid buffs and trimmings; one with the equivalent 10 man gear and the same buffs; one with my crappy heroic gear with all the same buffs and trimmings; one with (a slightly unrealistic) all the buffs and trimmings but with the target_level override set to 87 (i.e. a heroic boss), you'd NEVER get this amount of buffs in a 5 man as you simply wouldn't have the classes there required (you're pushing it for a 10 man); and then finally, a far more realistic 5 man scenario with just plain old Fort, Int, and MOTW (a reasonable assembly of buffs in my view), oh and replenishment as you'll be keeping that up at all times (WONT YOU?!?) as it's one of your main sources of DPS. The baseline scenario will be the final, and probably worst DPS(it's chugging away as we speak, so we'll see if my prediction shows me up to be the eejit you suspect me to be).

I'm setting the fight length to 350 seconds (nearly 6 minutes), 2 adds, Patchwerk style fight, and assuming you're the best of the best when it comes to mashing keys and given you (well me) an elite skill level – the trick is to only change one variable (or set of variables) at a time so the comparison has some meaning. As homework, I'll leave you to run your own simulation, with your gear, with a realistic skill level and fight scenario, I can't stress highly enough that stat weightings will vary massively depending on your ability (or lack of it), your gear, the number of adds, the type of fight, and a whole host of other variables, what is certain is the figures are a model (a model, by definition is an approximation, and only an approximation) of reality. Go read about statistical modelling in a text book or here on Wikipedia or somewhere else where stats geeks lurk.

Lecture over, and here we are, remember I'm using me as the baseline, the links to the full reports are at the end, I'll reference sections only, for comparison in the main text to keep my ramblings to sub War and Peace word count.

First of all, and the thing you're almost all certainally here for, the scale factors, or stat weighting s as they're sometimes known. You'll notice two values, a scale factor and a normalised value; the latter is the one you want, it simply skews everything so that it's a direct comparison to your best stat (Int) to make it easy(er) to compare one stat to another when you come to chosing your gear. I'll be posting some specific analysis on stat weights in my next blog so if you're still confused check back and I'll endeavour to confuse you more.

Int will always be best, if haste comes in at 0.5 and Crit at 0.25 it means that Int is twice as good as Haste, and Haste is twice as good as Crit (and thus Int is 4 times better than Crit). Put simply, if given those weights, you have a simple choice of a tunic with 100 Int and 150 Haste, you'd always chose the first one (but it's never that simple is it?).

Next you're at the charts, the damage per execute is a telling chart, if interpreted correctly; it's basically saying for the amount of time you spend casting these are the spells which do the most damage – i.e. devouring plague is an instant cast spell so does the most damage per cast.

Next is the damage source pie chart, you'll notice that mind flay is near the top in all, which seems counter intuitive given the last statement. But think about it for a second, mind flay is your filler when all of the other spells are on cooldown or waiting for procs, you're casting it for the most time, so it does lots of DPS, but bang for buck its lower than the others.

The other thing to note in these early graphs is the mana timeline graph, if you're going oom regularly, you're doing something wrong (or something right, i.e. emergency healing which is saving the wipe), I've heard a few Shadow Priests complain about mana issues, this should never be the case with any level of gear.

The most important graph in my opinion is the DPS scaling at the end, this basically says if you add 100(for the sake of argument, you could use any figure) of any given stat, what is the expected DPS increase? You'll notice for me Haste Crit and Mastery all look pretty much the same, crossing once or twice; for the best spec there's a far bigger difference as you follow the graph up with Haste becoming the worst and then the best and then the worst etc. as you go up. This is because of a whole heap of internal metrics (some of which we know about or can approximate, some which Blizzard keep close to their chests).

Notice on the t11 graph, Hit and Spirit have a scale factor up to 0 (i.e. if your gear was worse) and then abruptly stop giving a dps boost – this is the hit cap. Also notice for me, it's pretty much horizontal (at target_level 87) which means I'm over my hit cap for heroics (naughty me, I'll be remedying this immediately).You'll also notice, if you look at the 3rd scenario that my dps drops, even though I've got massive buffs, this is purely because of the hit cap dynamic, and is a good reminder to follow the basic principles that have been with us for all (well almost if you forget the last 3 months) of WOW - get hit capped first!

That's it for the basics, there's loads (and loads and loads) more, have a read, if there's anything you want me to explain (or make up on the spot) leave a comment, or email, tweet, or send a carrier pigeon. I'll be posting an additional blog on the differences of the stat weightings specifically tomorrow.



Report Download

Scenario 1 – best T11 25 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 2 – T11 10 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 3 – my crappy gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 4 - my crappy gear, all buffs, heroic boss

Scenario 5 - my crappy gear, sensible buffs, heroic boss



 

Just what makes you tick?

As an ex guild leader, recruitment officer, raid leader, website admin, raider, and now just plain old run of the mill casual I've seen what goes on in a guild at pretty much every level, both publically and behind the scenes. Over the past three years or so I've been studying an MBA which looks at all aspects of business. This has been sponsored by my employer and has an obvious tie in with my day to day work but I've often considered that a typical guild structure mimics that of a corporation, not only that but the types of character, and more specifically leader match the people you meet in industry and the types of characteristics you find in people which makes companies or teams more likely to succeed, or fail, are almost identical to those you find in WOW.

I'm going to talk a little here about leadership characteristics (I don't necessarily mean an appointed leader, anyone can 'lead' something in a given situation) which make for success in any organisation (including guilds). It's important first to understand what the objectives are of an organisation; you may assume all commercial organisations exist solely for profit, and that may be true, to an extent, for some. But profit for who? The owners? The shareholders? What about the workers? They make a 'profit' of sorts in their pay packet every month. Even customers make a 'profit', when looked at in these terms, they are gaining some sort of benefit from being a customer there is value in this benefit to them (the reason they derive value doesn't matter, it just matters that they do). Charitable organisations aren't really interested in profit in normal terms; they are mainly focussed on helping their target area. Even culturally company's outlooks differ, Japanese corporations, for example often regard future growth as highly, if not higher, as current profit, whereas western organisations tend to focus heavily on the short term here and now, often to the detriment of longer term stability (incidentally one of the contributing factors of the current global recession). So actually when you look under the hood of what makes an organisation tick, it differs wildly. Being very generalistic about the objectives, you could say that any objective of an organisation is to give value to its respective stakeholders. Stakeholders are anyone who has a vested interest in that organisation, no matter what it is; value is whatever benefit they derive from being a stakeholder. For a shareholder in a big company it might be the yearly dividend they receive, it may however be the opportunity they get to turn up each year at the AGM and shout at the CEO, my point is it's down do the individual; as a WOW player, in a raiding guild, it might be the shiny purples, it might be the experience of raiding, it might be the social scene, it might be the fear of not playing (addiction) or a whole range of other reasons unique to the individual. As a leader, it is important to understand what makes the stakeholders tick (and it may change from minute to minute or year to year).

Once you understand what makes people tick (or at the very least what makes others tick is not necessarily the same as you), a leader can set about trying to lead. I'm going to draw heavily from a text book which I read cover to cover for my first ever MBA module, "Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership" by Bolman and Deal, it's a great read (if you make it through the first two chapters which are truly awful), if you're actually interested I'll link this and any other reference material at the end.

So, you know what makes people in your guild tick, you understand people have different outlooks on life, and you know these differing views will inevitably cause friction at some point, how do you go about setting up your organisation (guild, raid or even 5-man party) to succeed? Firstly ask yourself what does success look like, if it's a heroic party, it might be clearing the instance; it may however be simply completing the daily heroic requirement, skipping everything that isn't necessary, it may simply be the first boss because the party's been set up to get a particular piece of loot. It may be a combination of all three (and any number of other) reasons for each of the members, already you have a possible 15 permutations (from 3 'success' criteria and 5 members) for a simple 5-man, it's a wonder any part s ever successful! For a guild it's much, much, more complicated! Hopefully you're starting to see there is no one correct answer which suits everyone, and even if it did, it would change so frequently you'd tear your hair out. All you can hope to do is abstract a set of principles or goals which mean success and apply a general framework to achieving that. By abstraction I mean Bob wants epics, lots of epixxxes; Fred wants to be the highest DPS in the guild; Clare whose sole aim in life is to wear the Mantle of Nefarius can all be abstracted to complete Blackwing Decent 25-man by x date. The framework is the tricky part, how do you as a leader best lead? This is where I'm going to reference Messer's Bolman and Deal, they refer to "four frames" of which a leader can use to lead; structural, human resource, political and symbolic. Each of the four frames is better suited to some leaders personalities than other, each has its place and depending on the situation will become more important than others.

I'll describe the four frames briefly, but if you're interested go read the book referenced at the end (it's available to view, in part, on Google Scholar)

• Structural: the most obvious, it's about the organisational boundaries, chain of command and process, there being a set list or blueprint for getting things done. A good example of where this works is an army, in the heat of battle soldiers, no matter the rank, fall back on their highly structured, highly disciplined training.
  
• Human Resource: sounds a bit corporate dunnit? Not really, the HR frame focuses on how characteristics of organisations and people shape what they do. It's the 'most important asset are our people' mentality, whereas a structural organisation will have people doing things because "that's how it's done" a HR focused organisation will more likely have people doing things "for the love of the organisation" (i.e. their derived value is more than just the pay check at the end of the month).
  
• Political: it's not a dirty word, don't assume it's the negative aspects of spin and self-interest you see in the media. Viewing an organisation from the political frame simply means you're making decisions to achieve set goals whilst taking account of scarce resources and diverged interests. It's a balancing act of trying to satisfy the most people possible in pursuit of achieving your goals.
  
• Symbolic: this is often one of the most powerful (and possibly destructive) a symbolic leader can be extremely powerful in terms of motivating people, think Ghandi or Martin Luther King, people we willing to die for their cause. Symbolic gestures too are extremely powerful, I remember a story of a Chief Executive and Chairman (possibly Ikea, I can't remember the exact details) who would share a hotel room whenever they were away on business "to save money" now in the context of a multi-billion pound company, a £100 a night saving isn't great, but the symbolism of the gesture is immense. Similarly adverse symbolic gestures can be hugely detrimental, think about the bad press city bankers have been getting lately for taking huge bonuses when the tax payers across the world have paid Billions to bail them out.
  

No do something for me, try and think of one example of each of these frames have been applied in your guild, by design, or by accident – is it the structure of officers and raid leaders, the selfless help offered in gearing a member up to raid who's taken some time off or the GM benching himself for a raid because there are more people wanting to raid than there is space? Actually, I've only given positive examples, try and think of one positive, and one negative, and then try and decide whether the person(s) involved acted without knowing the consequences, or whether (in your opinion) they'd weighed up the pro's and con's and taken the course of action with full awareness of the consequences (probably best to keep your findings private, you might upset people if you post your examples on the guild forum – political frame and all that… :-)

If you're an experienced GM, raid leader, manager, or have had any other reason to 'lead' a group of people you've almost certainly recognised yourself in what I've said, perhaps more by accident than design you'll have done things which could be construed as fitting into one of the four frames. Whether you're a GM, raid leader, or just a standard player, take some time to think about what you and your 'colleagues' want from the game in any given circumstance, and try to work out the best way to achieve 'success' whatever success may be.

WOW is a strange animal, it thrusts people into situations, which in the real world they'd never dream of, yet they survive, and not only that, excel! How many people have managed a team of 40+ people? Not many, I've had a reasonably long career in industry, managing a variety of teams, and approached that number in a couple of occasions, but think back to Vanilla WOW I was regularly organising and running 40 man raids, as were thousands of others across WOW. Leadership, more importantly good leadership isn't about being the boss, or necessarily the one who gets all the credit, it's about getting more out of others than they thought they were capable of in pursuit of achieving the organisational goals.

Even as an individual raider in a group of 25 you can have a positive impact on the group as a whole, think about the symbolic gesture of passing on a bit of loot, even though you're top of the DKP tree, for a newer raider who's gear is far worse – the total improvement to the organisation is far larger, but the symbolism of you looking after the interest of the whole guild or raid won't be lost, others will take the example and act in a similar way.



Now the reference – the link to Google Scholar http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tsFj7wgczvYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=reframing+organisations&hl=en&ei=C9NbTdePMJKShAfJ7OXuDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA

Or the proper Harvard style reference for you more studious types:

Bolman L.G. and T.E. Deal (2003). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass

Idiots guide to SimulationCraft

I recently downloaded SimulationCraft in order to get a better handle on whether I'm missing something on the DPS front, and what my ideal stat priorities are. I've played with SimulationCraft in the distant past but haven't touched it for a couple of years. I'd like to state up front that it's a cracking tool, though it is a modelling tool, by definition models give an approximation of reality and aren't necessarily an exact representation of it. The current version gives you the opportunity to simulate the 'ideal' fight, where everything is straight forward in terms of needing to move (which affects your DPS rotation), hitting your rotations exactly as planned, receiving buffs, and not suffering debuffs. It also gives you the ability to simulate a fight which is a bit more realistic, where you might need to be moving out of crap, dealing with adds, messing up the occasional button press etc.

So why simulate your DPS in such a way? Simple really, it gives you an idea of what your DPS potential is given your current gear levels (rather than what some Elitist Jerk tells you it should be) and lets you compare your 'normal' performance with what it could or should be. More importantly, it lets you play around with your Enchanting, Gemming and Reforging to maximise your DPS (and of course you re-run the simulation when you've changed it to confirm it's had the desired effects). SimulationCraft can be very eye opening if done right, but it does require you to be honest with yourself, if the figures come out at 15k DPS and you currently do at best 7k have you done something wrong, can you dismiss it as errors in the tool, or is there something fundamentally wrong with your playing style? Use SimulationCraft as any other addon or tool, to augment your ability to playing performance.

The main issue for most with Open Source packages such as SimulationCraft is the sheer dauntingness of opening up for the first time and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I've had occasion to be involved in several Open Source projects over my career (I've even wrote a number of white papers on the subject) and there are two recurring theme's which are replicated in most project. Firstly the project fills a gap which is missing in the area, it is written by the 'people' (by people read user / consumer etc.) because there is a dearth of information or functionality in the said area. Secondly, the documentation sucks; developers hate documentation, Open Source developers excel at hating documentation… SimulationCraft seems to fit these two area's quite nicely, hence me writing a quick guide, I'll cover the 'perfect' scenario for a boss fight in Heroics for a Shadow Priest, the closest approximation I can come up with off-hand in Cata is if you stand up on the statue for the croc boss (thus avoid the adds) in The Lost City of Tol'Vir. I'll leave it to you to make the changes for the less than ideal scenario, raiding, or other classes, the best advice I can give you is have a play, it's the best way to learn.

Anyway, enough rambling, here we go:

You'll need to download and unpack the SimulationCraft files from here it's a standalone executable (i.e. you don't need to install it) so just stick it somewhere on your hard drive, open the folder and double click the SimulationCraft application icon in the base folder.

First thing to do is make sure you have your base options right, we're going for the 'ideal' run of the mill scenario so we'll be picking pretty easy variables. Click on the options tab and then Globals if it's not already selected here you'll see a number of options, I'm ignoring the obvious ones and concentrating on the less than straight forward ones; you're a Shadow Priest, you obviously have some common sense, use it for the options I've missed ;-)

Iterations (next to the red 'A') are important – you're simulating what could happen, there are lots of random variables around the lines of hit chance, crit chance and a whole host of others, to make sure you're using a statistically significant number you should use at least 1000 iterations, as a rule use 100 first while you're getting to grips with the tool (you'll almost certainally balls it up first time) 1000 when you're comfortable with it and 10000 when you have everything set exactly right 1000 iterations will take 10 times longer than 100, and 10000 another 10 times longer than that.

Length (B) refers to the length of the fight in seconds, we're doing heroic boss fights so pick something sensible, 200 seconds is 3 minutes 20 Seconds which seems reasonable. The vary length (C) introduces a bit of variety into the length, at 20% each iteration will pick a fight length randomly between 160-240 seconds. Adds (D) is pretty self-explanatory – we're doing straight forward so let's go for none. Fight style (E) offers the opportunity to introduce the random movement elements into the fight, Patchwerk (if you remember Naxx) is a stand and deliver DPS race, Helter Skelter is the move out of the crap equivalent of most boss fights, pick Patchwerk for now, but use Helter Skelter when you're looking for realism. The target race (F) offers the opportunity to pick a race which your class / race / build / gear allow you to excel or struggle against, stick with humanoid. Player skill is a strange one, no one (I don't think) can class themselves as Elite this, as I understand it means you get off every spell cast at the perfect moment, without lag or any other issues, even for the baseline I always select good (as an experiment you might want to keep everything else the same after your first run, and come back changing this to elite – I did say have a play!) Threads (H) refers to the processor on your machine, most modern processors have multiple cores, so can use multiple threads (i.e. run faster) if you're unsure hit ctrl-alt-delete (on windows) select task manager and then the performance tab and count the number of boxes in the CPU usage history section, or just select 1.


Next select the buffs tab, you want to be realistic here, I've assumed the presence of a druid and a mage (which isn't unreasonable) plus your own buffs, if simulating a raid you'll add most / all of these. Similarly in the debuff tab I deselect everything, it's a baseline after all, when you're playing later to get a more realistic level, try putting some in.

For Scaling and Plots (i.e. the stats which are pertinent to you as a Shadow Priest) select all of the figures which make a difference to your DPS, if you're looking at a different class then you need to know which these are.

Now comes the tricky bit, the character import, I'm on an EU server, hence the url shown, the important part is to ensure you get the correct server (I) and the character name (J) once you are confident it's correct click import and you should automatically be directed to the simulation tab with a load of stats in front of you taken form the armoury (if you haven't, which happened to me on several occasions, the only way I've got round it is to close the program and restart.





We're now almost ready to simulate something, I say almost because there's one important variable we've forgot, the boss level, SimulationCraft assumes raid boss, but we're looking at Heroic Bosses. Click on the overrides tab and enter the line 'target_level=87' as shown.

Now you can click simulate, and we're off! Depending on the number of iterations, and the speed of the computer you're using this may take some time. If you're on a reasonable PC, by the time you've read this it'll be done, if you're on a Spectrum ZX81 then go make a coffee, if you don't know what a ZX81 is, you're too young and you've not lived! Go ask your dad. Once the simulation has finished you should get a nice results pane, I say 'should', but it never works for me, if this happens go back to the SimulationCraft folder and double click the simc_report.html file – it you're unsure order the folder by date modified, it'll be one of the files close to the top – this will open the report in your web browser of choice.

And there you have it, SimulationCraft, easy no? make sure you look out for the normalised scale factors, these are your bread and butter for gearing, but also have a look at your damage sources, you'll notice your dots are the top DPSers excluding Mind Flay, you'll then (hopefully) notice the DPS per execute times and realise that for the amount of time you spend casting those DoTs compared to MF they're a huge DPS / time boost. Happy Simulating, I don't claim to be the font of all knowledge on this subject, so please if I've missed something please let me know, or just let me know how you got on.


NB: there's some suggestion that there is a slight bug in the SimulationCraft software since the 4.0.6 patch which is causing some inacuracies in the results; you might want check back and download the latest patch from time to time as these these bugs are fixed
 

Quick Foray into the Conclave of Four Winds

I know I know, I'm casual, I don't have time to raid… I've said it before and what did I go and do?....

Sunday evening is one of the nights my guild raids, normally I have family commitments on a Sunday evening so am not about until after they've started, this particular Sunday however I was at a loose end and when the GM started putting the raid together I whispered my normal "here if you're desperate" now I normally do this if I know I'm going to be about, as I know from experience how frustrating it is to be sat in a raid group waiting to fill the final one or two slots, fully expecting not to be needed. To my amazement they were obviously REALLY desperate and asked me to come fill the final slot. I did make sure they understood that I had no clue what I was doing, only having had a cursory scan over the raid guides and had done absolutely nil preparation.

So I logged onto Vent and off I popped to the Conclave of Four Winds. "After a quick conversation of this is what I think I need to do, is that right?" I was assured that all I needed to do was kill things and follow the group I'd been positioned with, this left me feeling a little uneasy as it didn't really give me a feeling of what to expect. Anyway we began, and the first thing which struck me was how straight forward it was, verging on easy. A little bit of crap on the floor, nothing too difficult on the adds front, just melt the boss then skip across to the next platform and repeat. I can see this fight being a bit of a pain for a PUG or any other group without voice communications, but with everyone on Vent it was pretty straight forward.

For those not familiar with the fight there are three bosses, Anshal, Nezir and Rohash, each of them on its own platform, having a special 'ultimate' ability which activate together when their energy bars hit 90. The twist being that all three of the boss' need to die within 1 minute of each other or they'll reset to 100% health. The trick to the raid is to have as many people as possible on Nezir's platform for the ultimate ability, he splits his ability evenly between all the people on the platform so the more people there the less deadly it is. He's stacks a nasty frost debuff so if you go to early you die, if you go too late other die. That's pretty much it, it strikes me that the Healers and Tanks have to communicate well, but there are far harder heroic bosses.

We wiped the first time, I think one of the tanks died, but the second time was straight forward, a bit of thinking on the fly by the raid leader to get more DPS onto Rohash, to kill him off at the same time as others, all in all not a bad way to spend 30 minutes of a Sunday evening, I'm sure it was so straightforward due to the competence of the other 24 people in the raid. I can happily say I didn't die, or do anything too stupid which took healers mana, though I did miss the first bridge to Nezir's platform. All a bit of a blur, and I can't say I fully got to grips with what was going on till after the raid and I got time to read up on what I'd just done and understand it, instructions on Vent saw me through safely and on the grounds I did reasonable dps (for me) and didn't die stupidly it was objective achieved.